By Experience--Gen. 30

"And Laban said unto him, I pray thee, if I have found favour in thine eyes, tarry: for I have learned by experience that the Lord hath blessed me for thy sake"(Gen. 30:27).

Jacob is ready to go home.

Laban, on the other hand, is not ready for him to go home.

Jacob's children are many, his wives now increased to four, and the rivalry still strong between the sisters. Yet, all of them are disgusted with Laban. Ready to leave.

But Laban's smooth mouth gets ahead. And gives Jacob an idea in the process.

The cattle are divided up: Jacob's portion are sent a good ways away with Laban's sons before Jacob can withdraw them as his payment and so God blesses Laban's flocks with striped, speckled, spotted, and brown sheep and goats. And Jacob increases.

Laban had freely admitted the reason for wanting Jacob to stay.

"I have learned by experience that the Lord hath blessed me for thy sake" (vs. 27).

One has to wonder, then: if Laban so desired the blessing of the Lord, why not destroy his household gods and begin worshipping the one True God?

Why not make this experience which he spoke of his own experience?

So many in this old world of ours are in the church, not because they have an experience, but because they have someone else's experience. Experience with experience. Not experience with the Lord.

So many are content to stay home, content with the experience of another in the mission field; rather than getting out of the pew and making someone else's mission experience their own.

Why stay home when you can go? Do? Be?

And why be content with someone else's experience...when you can have your very own?

Get up. Go. Be. Learn. Wrestle. Fight. Pray.

Experience.

Make someone else's experience your own.

And you will learn by experience, that the Lord will bless you...not for someone else's sake…

...but for His own.

Lord, help me to know You and Your love and Your work by experience--my own experience, and not another's...